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State Rep. Stephen Dyer announced this afternoon the list of area districts that will benefit from $26 billion in new spending passed earlier this month to prevent layoffs. $10 billion of that was set aside for teachers.

Ohio stands to receive $361,179,690 of that $10 billion. Akron will get about $6.6 million "for salaries and benefits for hiring, rehiring, retaining teachers and others supporting the daily education of Ohio's students. "

I visited an 8th grade math class at Coventry Junior High School on Friday to learn more about Coventry's new block scheduling for math. Basically, the district doubled the amount of time students spend in math class. Some block schedules squeeze a year's worth of math into a semester with block scheduling, but that's not what Coventry is doing. Kids get math, every day, every week, all year. The district credits that for its big math gains on the state achievement tests last year reflected on the state report cards released on Friday.

Korianne VanAuken, 23, started last year at the district fresh out of Bowling Green University. Last year, the district was able to tap into federal stimulus dollars by hiring her out of Summit Educational Service Center. This year, she's on the Coventry payroll. She said all of her student teaching was done in traditional 45-minute segments, so he had to make adjustments to how she taught and monitored the energy level of the room. The longer period allows her to some direct instruction, some hands-on activities and to help individual students or small groups of students who need extra attention (the traditional 45-minute periods leave no time to circle back, the principal explained. If you didn't get chapter one, well, too bad, we're on to Chapter Two this week).

I was on the phone with someone from East High School who disappointed that I didn't mention East moving from academic watch to continuous improvement when I got an email from someone at Firestone disappointed that I didn't mention that Firestone, alone among APS high schools, was rated Excellent again. Ellet High also is excellent this year. BTW, Akron Early College also is rated excellent, though it's not a traditional stand alone high school. My apologies for the omissions. Time and space didn't allow for us to include every school that showed improvement.

Here's some other highlights from the APS summary presented at the school board meeting on Monday that we didn't have space for in today's story:

Here's a short video on the celebration at Crouse elementary school in Akron this morning concluding a two-week camp for incoming kindergarteners. This is the second year of the collaboration between Project GRAD (which also concluded its program for incoming 9th graders at Buchtel High School today) and Kent State University. Special thanks to the young woman from Project GRAD for being a good sport and agreeing to demonstrate the popular call and response song they did during the camp to get kids used to following directions. Story to follow.